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Quantifying Uncertainty in predictions of climate change & climate impacts

Programme background

Quantitative estimates of uncertainty are a key element of the user requirement for climate predictions, but the challenge of producing such estimates has received little attention.

Many current predictions simply represent uncertainty in terms of an ensemble of different model predictions, with no indication as to whether some predictions may be more trustworthy than others, or what is the actual likely range within which we should expect future observable quantities to fall.

All approaches to generating more useful estimates rely on bringing together models and observations. Statistical modelling plays a key role but there are many outstanding issues that require research. There are a number of approaches and the most appropriate methods to generate the required information have yet to be established.

This research programme forms part of the NERC Climate System and Natural Hazards themes and contributes to Living With Environmental Change (LWEC). It aims to produce methods for quantifying uncertainty in predictions of regional and local climate change and climate impacts.

The problem of quantifying uncertainty is generic and important, as decision makers are developing policy on the basis of climate predictions, without adequate strategies for handling the significant uncertainties involved. It is also relevant to predictions of impacts; eg effects of land use change on flood generation, ground stability or ecosystems.

The overall programme objective is to:

• Develop and test methods to combine observations and models to quantify the uncertainty in predictions of regional and local climate change, including changes in extreme events and climate impacts, especially for the next few decades.

This research programme supports a collaborative research project 'End-to-end Quantification of Uncertainty for Impacts Prediction' (EQUIP) to address its objectives. The research brings together experts across a range of relevant disciplines and will also involve a broad network contributing to the project.

The programme ran a sandpit event to develop and assess the EQUIP project.